Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne mass outage: More details released on lightning strike that cut power

The location of the lightning strike (in red) close to Taupō that caused the mass outage. Photo / Transpower

Plenty of Hawke’s Bay residents were feeling worse for wear on Tuesday after being woken early twice in two days – first by an earthquake, then a storm that caused a mass power cut.

A lightning strike hit Transpower powerlines between Taupō and Napier, near Iwitahi, at 2.32am on Tuesday.

That caused a mass outage in Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne.

Howling winds and lashing rain were also experienced during that time in the region.

Power was restored for most of Hawke’s Bay by 5am, and for Wairoa and Gisborne by 6am, according to power companies.

Fortunately, Fire and Emergency New Zealand did not report any serious weather-related incidents for Hawke’s Bay early on Tuesday.

Transpower confirmed the lightning strike hit between two of its towers between Napier and Taupō, closer to Taupō.

“Transpower began restoring its network immediately,” Transpower said in a statement, adding the outage impacted Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti.

The lightning struck powerlines between two Transpower towers (blue markers). Image / Transpower

Lightning continued to light up the sky north of Napier after the outage.

Meanwhile, New World Dannevirke suffered a “system failure” during a power cut early on Tuesday, and shared on social media that it may impact the store’s range of chilled and frozen products.

The supermarket had a back-up system and generator, like many other supermarkets, but the power surge “damaged a critical component that keeps it running”.

The council-owned Flaxmere Community Centre was flooded due to a dishwasher malfunction from a power surge around the time of the power cut, and was closed.

Later on Tuesday, bursts of rain and even hail fell in some parts of Hawke’s Bay.

A day prior, during the early hours of Monday, an earthquake jolted the region, also waking up many residents.

That 4.5-magnitude quake hit at 1.08am about 5km south of Napier at a depth of 24km.

Roughly 2000 people reported feeling it on GeoNet’s website, the vast majority of them in Napier and Hastings.

Some in Waipukurau and Wairoa also reported light shaking.

As for the weather forecast, Hawke’s Bay has the possibility of some showers and strong winds on Wednesday afternoon but conditions are expected to be fine on Thursday.

During mid-December last year, Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne had a similar hours-long power outage, when a lightning strike also impacted the Transpower powerlines between Napier and Taupō.